


But These My Joints

by Rubynye



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-14
Updated: 2010-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:30:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steph's gonna make her sorry she <i>ever</i> tried to take down Robin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But These My Joints

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://community.livejournal.com/dc_flashfiction/profile)[**dc_flashfiction**](http://community.livejournal.com/dc_flashfiction/) [A Thousand Words Challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/dc_flashfiction/32571.html), based on [this piece of art](http://d0wn-on-paper.livejournal.com/42659.html). So, thanks to [](http://users.livejournal.com/_audrey/profile)[**_audrey**](http://users.livejournal.com/_audrey/) for the fabulous art and [](http://thete1.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://thete1.livejournal.com/)**thete1** for the nifty challenge!

Title: But These My Joints  
Fandom: DC Comics  
Rating: PG, mostly for cursing  
Summary: Steph's gonna make her sorry she _ever_ tried to take down Robin.  
Pairing: Robin/Spoiler (Steph/Tim)  
Warnings/Features: smidge of het, smidge of bad language.  
Beta Reader and Semicolon Controller: [](http://sister-wolf.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://sister-wolf.livejournal.com/)**sister_wolf**  
Disclaimer: These characters belong to DC Comics, not to me.  
Author's Note: Written for the [](http://community.livejournal.com/dc_flashfiction/profile)[**dc_flashfiction**](http://community.livejournal.com/dc_flashfiction/) [A Thousand Words Challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/dc_flashfiction/32571.html), based on [this piece of art](http://d0wn-on-paper.livejournal.com/42659.html). So, thanks to [](http://users.livejournal.com/_audrey/profile)[**_audrey**](http://users.livejournal.com/_audrey/) for the fabulous art and [](http://thete1.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://thete1.livejournal.com/)**thete1** for the nifty challenge!

 

"_Shit_!" Steph says fervently, if quietly, since she's got no way of knowing if anyone's still on the roof above her. The roof she just got herself kicked off of. Besides, with her cheek flat against the cool dusty gutter she can't move her mouth much anyway. She's slumped on her face with her ass in the air, full of pins and needles from her hands cuffed behind her back to her toes in her boots dangling over the drop, her ribs throbbing from the way she landed like a sack of wet rocks, but at least as the prickles subside bit by bit she can feel her body again.

"Fucking hell," Steph mumbles for good measure, then feels a little guilty. She might've really fallen a hell of a long way if she hadn't landed in the gutter, and it didn't even creak much, so she's definitely not mad at it. The rest of the world, pretty much. She's mad at the cuffs around her wrists as she wiggles her fingers till she can feel her gloves again, at the wind dragging at her cape like a live evil thing trying to yank her off her perch, and at herself for getting tranqued, de-masked and kicked off a fucking roof like something useless. And, most of all, at the bitch who just kidnapped Robin and tried to kill her.

Steph's fingers feel like they're shrinking as she wiggles them, back to their normal size and shape instead of huge and stiff and clumsy, so she rummages the back of her left glove for the lockpicks Robin gave her. "Dammit, where are you?" she mutters, grits her teeth, and stretches till her fingertips brush over the end of one and she can pinch it and pull; she just can't reach the cuff with her shoulders down like this, so she kneels up, slowly, though it makes her thighs scream and the gutter creaks and wobbles ominously.

Steph presses her shoulder against the rough stonework, wobbling over thirty stories of thin air, and ignores her aching ribs and thighs, because she needs to not yelp. As she twists her right leg in front of her, foot stuck out at an angle that's rapidly going from uncomfortable to downright painful, Steph bites her lip and pushes her shoulders back, pulling against the cuffs for room to work and listening as hard as she can. All she hears is traffic honking _ way_ far below her and the wind whisking her hair around and screeching between the buildings; the bitch in red and blue must've left, taking Robin with her. Steph's alone on this building, in her creaky shifting gutter.

At least that makes getting out of here a little easier, and she can use every advantage she can get. Trying to get at the lock just isn't working from this angle, so she twiddles the lockpick into the ratchet, pressing her eyes shut as she concentrates; she could kiss Robin all over again for giving her these. She _will_, after he kisses her for rescuing him.

After she kicks the _ass_ of the bitch who kidnapped Robin and kicked Steph off a roof. Amy Salters in History would probably call Steph antifeminist for calling the woman a bitch, but Amy Salters isn't teetering thirty stories over traffic trying to pick handcuffs behind her back. Steph wonders what Amy'd do if someone tranqued _her_ and kidnapped her boyfriend, and doesn't think about those thirty stories under her as she works the cuffs.

As hard as she's thinking about other things, Steph can't keep from feeling the wind yanking at her, the lots of nothing beneath her. So instead, she thinks about Robin, his quiet little smile and the way he says so much with his eyebrows.

After he kisses her he'll probably look at her all, "I told you so." When Steph stood up to wiggle out the kinks and dared Robin to a jumpline race to 45th Street because it was such a slow night, he replied, "we shouldn't get too comfortable" but he was smiling, if not quite yet with his mouth. She totally could have gotten him to go swinging with her.

Instead, like divine fucking judgment or maybe just Gotham's nasty streak, there was an electric-equipment sort of whine, and a dark-colored blur on the shadowed side of the roof; Robin's head whipped around, his hand flicked up, and there was an "ow!" in the shadows and a splash of sparks. Steph was getting her fists up, but when she glanced at Robin to say "nice shot!" or some other sort of lame thing his hand was on his cheek, his head was tipping back, and as he crumpled she saw the dart roll off his fingers.

God. Steph remembers, and shakes, and the lockpick skids across the cuff, making her yank it hard enough to hurt her wrist. Telling herself to get a grip, she shakes her head as hard as she dares, which isn't much, and keeps trying. Robin's alive, and he needs her help.

He was still breathing, so she started forward, ducking, and something whizzed over her head. She threw a loose pebble where Robin threw his Batarang, and the woman dodged awkwardly, lurching out into the light. Red and blue armored spandex and a crackling band on one leg that she was pulling off as she limped, short dark hair around her head and a full-face mask and a dartgun coming up in her other hand.

Steph ran low, thinking of a spinkick to take out the gun; she could take this woman, she was way faster. A kick and a snide comment would do it, with the woman backing up as Steph jumped, blocking with a grunt, and all Steph had to do was get in one good hit and keep from being shot.

One out of two. The woman staggered back with a high-pitched "ow!", and at least Steph didn't give her that, though the dart hurt like a beesting in her shoulder, and Robin was right about her fucking too-thin suit too. Steph didn't even manage to grab the dart before she fell like a boneless sack of meat, smacking her head on the concrete roof.

She can still feel the bump under her hair, trying to make her dizzy, but it always hurts worse if you think about it, so she doesn't. She's got the tip of her lockpick into the ratchet, and some twisting gets it further in, bit by bit. Staying still, except for this, seems to have kept the gutter still too, so Steph breathes as shallowly as possible as she works on the cuffs.

About as shallowly as she breathed as she lay there, dizzy and fuzzy brained but not _out_, just paralyzed, as the woman "mmphed" and caught her damn breath while neither Steph nor Robin could do anything. Steph listened, too mad to even think of something snarky, as the bitch walked over to Robin, not _enough_ of a limping hitch in her step, and shot him again. Steph winced inside at the hiss of the gun, and listened to the woman walk over to her, slow and arrogant like they were at her mercy.

Which they were. _Godfucking dammit._ Steph shoves the lockpick as hard as she can with a cuffed hand, even though the other cuff dents her wrist through her glove.

The woman didn't shoot Steph again. She just looked her over. "Hmm, you're not on the list," she said in this fucking honeysweet voice, like that smiling viper of a guidance counselor back at school, and she nudged Steph over onto her side with a not-very-gentle boot to her ribs.

Steph tried to stiffen her back and move her arms, thought every curse she knew, and just rolled like a bag of potatoes. Couldn't even open her eyes as the woman pulled off her mask and tossed it aside. Steph heard it whistle and flutter off into the darkness.

"If he wanted you he should've ordered you," the woman said to Steph, who would've told her where to stick her order and her dart gun, if she could. "It's a pity, pretty girl. You should've known better than to get involved."

She pulled Steph's wrist out from under her body and back, and all Steph could think for a minute was, "get your goddamn hands off me!" Till she felt the cuffs. Till she felt the boot back in her ribs again, rolling her towards the edge of the roof; her head fell forward and the concrete skinned her nose and scraped her cheek.

Steph had just enough time to breathe and clamp down on a freak-out, because freaking wouldn't help, and over she went into the air.

She hit the gutter tits-first and it smacked the breath out of her, but when she realized she at least wasn't dead, she could have cheered. Except that she had to lie there, on her face with her ass up, waiting for the paralysis to wear off.

It felt like forever. Steph hopes it's not forever, because the bitch could be doing whatever to Robin, and she's all the help he's got at the moment. The lockpick is teetering at the tips of her fingers, but--- _there_. The cuff clicks back and opens. Steph brings her hands around as slowly as she can make herself, and the gutter fortunately only shudders; she stretches her arms out in front of her, picks the lock off the other wrist, and nearly tosses them.

Then she thinks better and tucks them in her thigh holster. Maybe she'll put them on that bitch. After she catches her. And breaks her fucking arm.

Glancing up for a good anchor point for her grapple, Steph sees her mask caught on a broken bit of molding. That works. She shoots, grabbing her mask on the way, and hauls herself up over the edge, trying not to remember how it felt to roll off it with absolutely no way to catch herself. The clock on the bank down the street tells her the whole mess only took thirteen minutes, and she turns to see a flash of moving blue and the yellow flutter of Robin's cape lining.

Steph takes off running, mask in hand, wiping her face with the back of her glove; it doesn't feel like it's bleeding. Ahead of her she can see the woman in red and blue, limping, with Robin in a fireman's carry; she'd better not drop him or he won't be there to keep Steph from kicking her face in.

Steph notes her position, shoots, and jumps; it's not hard to keep quiet, with the rush of swinging all damped by worry, but the air feels a lot friendlier with a jumpline in her grip. She _can_ catch up to them, and she will, and when she does this woman's gonna be sorry she _ever_ took the job of taking Robin down.


End file.
